(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a terminal, a method for handover thereof, and a supporting method for handover of a base station.
(b) Description of the Related Art
When a terminal moves from a cell managed by one base station to a cell managed by another base station, the terminal performs a handover procedure. At this time, the base station to which the terminal is originally connected broadcasts a base station list to be connected after the handover. The terminal scans the base station list and performs the handover based on the result.
Meanwhile, a femto cell means a region that provides a wireless communication service to areas within, for example, a 30 m radius. A femto base station managing the femto cell is installed at an office or a home.
A large number of femto cells may be overlapped within a macro cell that manages a cell having a larger area than that of the femto cell. When the terminal is handed over from a macro cell to the femto cell, a macro base station broadcasts a macro base station list, which manages neighboring macro cells, as well as a plurality of femto base station lists, which is overlapped in the corresponding macro cell, to the terminal. For this reason, the amount of information broadcasted by the macro base station is sharply increased, which imposes a heavy burden on the search procedure of the terminal receiving the information.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.